At the start of 2013 Digital Spy listed MS MR as one of the most exciting pop acts to look out for this year.

Five months later we still fully stand by that claim, and we're not alone; the duo's music has been playlisted on Radio 1 and featured in a high-profile trailer for Game Of Thrones.

We caught up with Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow to chat about the release of their debut album Secondhand Rapture, as well as their thoughts on Jay-Z outing himself as a fan.

You've had a great 2013 so far; how have you found your move into the mainstream?Max: "I think everything in our lives that has changed has been fairly gradual. I think this summer is going to be the test of being away from home for six weeks."

Your track 'Bones' fits almost too perfectly in the Game Of Thrones trailer. Were you fans of the show before?Max: "Yeah, that is our favourite show. We don't watch a lot of things together on the tour bus, but that is one of the ones we watched through the whole season. We're both huge fans. The song fitted it perfectly and they edited it so well. It gave us 20 million new impressions, so that was just the cherry on top."

'Salty Sweet' was also used in Pretty Little Liars, so have you noticed more fans getting on board through these TV soundtrack features?Lizzy: "Definitely, Game Of Thrones was such an incredible one for us because it's one of those shows that doesn't usually highlight new music. But with Pretty Little Liars, someone told us that it gets the most talked-about music from a TV show, judging from Twitter. So it was wonderful to be recommended in that way. Some artists are sensitive about what their music is used in, but for us we're more interested in how it will be interpreted."

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We've been listening to your new album Secondhand Rapture and it's amazing. How would you describe it to those who haven't heard it yet?Max: "It's a pretty varied album. The range of inspiration that we drew from is very wide. The overarching genre is definitely pop, with a dark epic twist."

'Think Of You' is a great track; surely it's a future single?Lizzy: "I think it will be, but we haven't really decided what the next singles will be. A huge part of it is just figuring out what the audience like. 'Think Of You' is definitely one that many, many people have brought up to us."

Do you have a personal favourite track on the album?Lizzy: "I'm really excited for people to hear 'Head Is Not My Home'. I absolutely love that track, because it was really fun to write and it's fun to perform live."Max: "I probably like 'BTSK'. It's nice to have that power ballad with funny lyrics and I just love that melody."

Why did you decide to release your single 'Hurricane' again?Lizzy: "'Hurricane' is - for both of us - the most MS MR-esque song. It's the song that initially brought people to the project. As we continue to reach out to more and more people, it's one we want to keep coming back to."

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The video for 'Hurricane' is awesome, although the blue paint looks like it took a long time to put on.Lizzy: "It took three hours to paint my whole body and probably an hour and a half for Max's face and hands. It took way more time to try and take off! We shot the painted-body scenes in the morning, then that night we were shooting without it, so I had to have eight showers before I was even close to getting it all off."Max: "We rented the house from some lady in LA and you could see her face drop when we went into the showers covered in this paint."

You're releasing Secondhand Rapture through your own label Creep City Records under licence to Sony, so did that mean you retained a large amount of creative control?Max: "It did - we had the greatest control over every element of the album. I think starting our own label was more about making that obvious and explicit. I don't know any other bands at our level who have had that kind of control and we've had very little push back. I think it's because we spent so long pulling together our visual and musical identity beforehand."

You've had some great reviews of your previous singles and EPs; do ever read them?Max: "We try to avoid getting too distracted by them. You can't totally isolate yourself from them - especially thanks to Lizzy's father who sends us every article he reads! The core ethos of how we started the project was that it was totally DIY. The power of the music is partly due to the fact we didn't have anyone else involved while we were writing it. We weren't having feedback from a label or even friends until we had pretty much written everything. So I think it's really important for both of us to maintain that level of isolation."

Obviously you would like to team up with him if the opportunity came your way?Lizzy: "I wouldn't say no! We were saying that it would be interesting to do. I don't think our sound immediately lends itself to become a hip-hop track, but it would be so much fun to do something with someone like Missy Elliott."

If you had to pick one of your tracks to put a hip-hop spin on, which one would it be?Lizzy: "Because it already has a sort of doo-wop reference, I think it would be really interesting for someone to reimagine 'Dark Doo Wop' and take it to another place."